No, I don't think your Grandma was a LIAR

No, I don't think your Grandma was a LIAR.
(I just think she was mistaken)

It is an all too common occurrence that one has a conversation, whether by email or on a genealogy forum, that goes something like this:

Person 1:   My Grandma told me that we were the direct descendants of George Washington.
Person 2:   George Washington didn't have any biological children, so that's not possible.
Person 1:   Are you calling my Grandma a LIAR?

Now, I grew up in the 1960s. The space race was on and there was a great emphasis on scientific education in the schools, including the scientific method. Later, in college, I took several classes in logic and historical oratory. All of these disciplines had the same underlying ideas, basically as follows:

Form a theory
Get a lot of raw data
Analyze the data to see if it supports the theory
Draw a conclusion on whether or not the original theory is sound

When I started working on my family, it seemed a good idea to use the same process in my genealogy research. Over time, I have met a great many other folks who had the same idea.

Unfortunately, there are also a great many folks who have taken a more mythological approach to genealogy, that as best I can understand, goes something like this:

Collect a lot of old family stories
Insist that they are true, even if they are provably inaccurate

You can see how the two camps might come into conflict.

Old family stories are often the source of some great genealogical clues. A fair number of them are accurate and authentic. But as stories are passed down over the generations, it's common for wording to get changed, meaning to get lost, inaccuracy to creep in. This doesn't mean the person telling the story is a liar. It just means the story is not what it used to be.

So here are some handy rules of thumb for dealing with old family stories and some examples of my experiences with them.

I. Is the story possible?
The first thing you want to ask about a family story is whether it's possible or not. This is the problem with the George Washington story - it contradicts known historical fact. There are other ways you might go about questioning whether something is possible. If you know when your ancestor was born, ask yourself whether he or she is too old, too young, living in the wrong place. You might also ask whether a thing is likely, especially with respect to the customs, beliefs and realities of the time in which the story is supposed to have occurred. A story about someone driving a car, for example, can't take place before the automobile was invented.

One from the files: It's frequently claimed that Elisha Gentry Rainwater fought in the Battle of San Jacinto in Texas. The fact that Elisha was tending his fields and fathering children in Georgia doesn't seem to bother anyone. In order to have served in the battle, Elisha would have had to desert his family, go to Texas, join the army and fight, dash back to Georgia in time to father his fifth son, then return to Texas sign the land warrants he received in payment in someone else's name, zooming back to Georgia in time for his wife to die and then undertake a second marriage. You don't have to look at this story too long to see that something is wrong here. It's when you notice that the name E. R. Rainwater is carved on the monument at San Jacinto that it occurs to you that the name signed on the land warrant, Edwin R. Rainwater, might not be Elisha Gentry Rainwater. Sadly, because this story made it into print, an awful lot of people credit Elisha with something he didn't do.

II. Does the story make a claim to fame?
Stories containing claims to fame and superlatives are frequently incorrect. Some examples I have heard are:

Was the oldest Union or Confederate survivor of the Civil War
Was the first white settler in the county (this is a very popular one)
Was the only survivor of Custer's Last Stand
Was the founder of a county or town
Is the descendant of or related to someone famous
Was the childhood friend of someone famous
Was a Cherokee or other Native American (this is practically an epidemic)

While any of these are possible, my experience is that these stories get repeated without ever having been checked, despite the fact that most contain information that us checkable. While doubtless a few of these "superlative" stories are true, I have yet to run across one.

One from the files: I have a newspaper article that claims that one of my husband's ancestors, John Milton Weddle, was the "first white settler" in Pulaski County, Kentucky. The problem is quite simple: Pulaski County was founded in 1798, but all of the evidence points to Weddle arriving in 1811 That means the county would need to be been utterly unoccupied for 13 years prior to his arrival, and there are plenty of tax, census and land records to prove this simply isn't the case.

III. Are you getting the story from the original source, or has it been passed around for a while?
Do you remember the children's game called Telephone? A group of children sit in a circle. One child whispers something to her neighbor, and the neighbor whispers to the next child and so on, until the story gets all the way around the circle. The story told by the first child and the story told by the last never match.

This frequently happens with family stories. If you're getting the story from the original source, there's a much higher possibility of accuracy than if you're getting the story third or fourth hand. One of the elements I have noticed that vanishes as a story is retold is uncertainty. Where the original story teller will say "I think he was the first white settler in the county", trust me, somewhere down the line this will be retold as "He was the first white settler in the county" as a definite fact.

Often details get lost, or inaccurately filled in by individuals who are "improving" the story. Or the inflection gets lost - what may have been said with a sly wink as irony by one person may be understood literally by another. We have all stood in front of a store display and said to a companion, "Oh isn't that lovely" when what we meant was "isn't that hideous". How easily that could be misunderstood in the retelling!

The farther you are away from the original storyteller, the less likely you are to know the condition of the individual telling the story. Was this person sharp as a tack or beginning to be forgetful? Was he generally truthful, or given to telling fish stories? Did she have fancies and notions, or stick to "just the facts, ma'am"? And finally, was he repeating what he personally knew, or what he had been told by someone else?

Finally, each of has had the experience of telling a story and having someone break in and say, "That's not the way it happened", and add some details the first storyteller has left out or overlooked. Most of us interview our grandparents when they are quite elderly and when there isn't anyone left to jump in or contradict. It's important to remember that being mistaken is not the same as lying.

One from the files: One of the Rainwater wives from the early 19th or late 18th centuries is supposed to have been able to speak to the local Native Americans in their own language, a talent that earned her the nickname "Granny Cherokee". This nickname is frequently sited as proof that Granny was herself of Cherokee origins. While this is certainly possible, it's equally possible that the nickname represented a gentle jest (put "Good Old" in front of Granny Cherokee and you begin to hear a little ribbing). Granny may simply have had more of a talent for picking up languages than her family and neighbors. In truth, we'll never know - too much time has elapsed - and the story no longer proves much of anything.

IV. Does the storyteller have a bias?
It's unfortunate, but it happens. Richard Nixon isn't the only person to have perpetrated a cover-up. Occasionally old family stories are manipulated to cover something the family finds embarrassing. A marriage date may get moved to make the first child appear legitimate. The relation who was a bootlegger or a bigamist may simply go unmentioned. The fellow who went west, will be presented as a pioneer rather than a man who deserted his wife. The obituary of the town drunk reads as if he was a source of great civic pride. And so on.

Some people simply can't bear to know that their ancestors weren't perfect. All of their direct ancestors were saints, and they don't take kindly to untidy facts that suggest otherwise.

It's not that these folks are lying, exactly - they're just not well connected to reality. They probably don't face facts well with the living, and they certainly don't face them well in the deceased. While you probably can't change the mind of a person who feels this way, you can take known biases into account when you weigh how reliable the story is.

One from the files: If you look at the records of Maryland's Eastern Shore around 1800, you will find a great many individuals who owned a few slaves. After the 1820s, most of these small scale slaveholders are gone from the slave rolls. It's quite common to hear that a revival came through and great-grandpa freed his slaves. The problem with this claim is that papers of manumission were supposed to be filed with the courthouse, and very few of these storytellers have such proof. The truth is that something else besides revival came through the Eastern Shore - an economic depression due to the falloff in ship building after the War of 1812. Most of the small scale slaveholders were forced to sell their slaves to larger landholders because of economic hardship. While I understand wanting to have ancestors who did noble things, I don't think it makes their behavior any nobler to paper over reality.

So what can you do about it?
Old family stories are often the source of genealogical clues and should not be tossed out without a fair hearing. When you receive one of these tales, make every attempt to document any element of the story that can be matched up with physical records. Then evaluate it to see if it holds up. Often you'll discover that the story is mostly correct, but has one element that rings false. John Milton Weddle, for example, was one of the early settlers of Pulaski County, he simply wasn't the first.

When stories do prove to be entirely incorrect, help take them out of circulation. Point out the errors when these tales surface on genealogy bulletin boards and in email. And for the sake of online peace, be willing to drop the conversation if the other person shows signs of being irrationally attached to a phony story.

Finally, be ready for that angry email reading "Are you calling my Grandma a LIAR?". With the facts at your command you can calmly answer, "No, I simply think she was mistaken."